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Is Healthcare a Right?

March 13, 2010 in Health Care by Greg | 2 comments

As President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats pull together a final version of a health care overhaul bill and push for House votes as early as this coming week, it’s important to consider health care as a right. Last year, Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) wrote persuasively that health care is a right versus a privilege, ostensibly because this is the way other countries treat health care. Not to be left behind in the international community, he advocated the following:

Healthcare_stethoscope As the health care debate heats up in Washington, we as a nation have to answer two very fundamental questions. First, should all Americans be entitled to health care as a right and not a privilege – which is the way every other major country treats health care and the way we respond to such other basic needs as education, police and fire protection? Second, if we are to provide quality health care to all, how do we accomplish that in the most cost-effective way possible?

I think the answer to the first question is pretty clear, and one of the reasons that Barack Obama was elected president. Most Americans do believe that all of us should have health care coverage, and that nobody should be left out of the system. The real debate is how we accomplish that goal in an affordable and sustainable way. In that regard, I think the evidence is overwhelming that we must end the private insurance company domination of health care in our country and move toward a publicly-funded, single-payer Medicare for All approach.1

Politicians have a propensity to exhibit A False Solicitude for the Unfortunate in society. And previously, Michael Connelly pointed out the health care bill is “a convenient cover for the most massive transfer of power to the Executive Branch of government that has ever occurred.”2

Recently, Walter E. Williams, the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, addressed the question of health care rights from a moral and economic point of view. He wrote that true rights exist at the same time among people. As such, one’s rights should not infringe upon the rights of others3:

Continue reading Is Healthcare a Right? »»

  1. “Health Care is a Right, Not a Privilege”. 8 Jun 2009. The Huffington Post. 13 Mar 2010.↩
  2. Health Care Bill Constitutional?.↩
  3. This principle echoes D&C 134:4 which was written in regards to “religious opinions” but can be applied to other forms of rights.↩

Tea Parties

February 21, 2010 in Economics by Greg | 1 comment

Recently, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin spoke to the “tea-party movement’s rank and file” in Arkansas. According to CBS,

Modern_Tea_Party_protestors. Asked what her advice would be to conservatives as the November elections approach, Palin first lavished praise on the Tea Party movement, calling it “a grand movement” and adding, “I love it because it’s all about the people.”

But she quickly pivoted to the broader question of whether the Tea Party movement might successfully field its own candidates in national elections, and on that point she sounded far from convinced.

“Now the smart thing will be for independents who are such a part of this Tea Party movement to, I guess, kind of start picking a party,” Palin said. “Which party reflects how that smaller, smarter government steps to be taken? Which party will best fit you? And then because the Tea Party movement is not a party, and we have a two-party system, they’re going to have to pick a party and run one or the other: ‘R’ or ‘D’.”1

Of course the first tea party – the Boston Tea Party – was not organized along political parties. It was formed as a consequence of a series of actions by King George III and the British government to recoup war costs of the French and Indian War that concluded in 1763. These actions included the Stamp Act of 1765, the Townsend Acts of 1767, and the Boston Massacre of 1770, all of which strained relations between the colonists and the Crown and eventually led to The Boston Tea Party of 1773.

Though the modern “Tea Party movement is working to halt the creation of dangerous precedents” such as the “’ratchet effect’ – that is, once government expands its power and new bureaucracies are in place, it’s difficult to undo them”, some have noted troubling differences. For example,

Continue reading Tea Parties »»

  1. Conroy, Scott. “Palin: Tea Partiers ‘Have to Pick a Party’”. 17 Feb 2010. CBS News. 21 Feb 2010.↩

Keynes and Hayek Rap Video

January 27, 2010 in Economics by Greg | 1 comment

This is a great little rap video parody featuring the government intervention policies promoted by Lord John Maynard Keynes versus the free market policies advocated by Friedrich A. von Hayek and Austrian Economics.

Created by Russell Roberts, Professor of Economics at George Mason University, and John Papola, an Executive Producer/Director at SpikeTV, the video features Billy Scafuri as “Grand Master” Keynes and Adam Lustick as F. A. Hayek (Billy and Adam).

In order to put this into some context, according to one writer:

As Hayek has shown, economic crises of boom and bust are created by governments that expand credit through central banks, creating unsustainable bubbles that ultimately crash. Unfortunately, based on Keynes’s theories, governments have foolishly then further intervened with bailouts and “stimulus” spending measures of pork and war that only prolong the recovery (e.g., Great Depression as well as the current economic malaise).1

YouTube Preview Image

Lyrics:

We’ve been going back and forth for a century
[Keynes] I want to steer markets,
[Hayek] I want them set free
There’s a boom and bust cycle and good reason to fear it
[Hayek] Blame low interest rates.
[Keynes] No… it’s the animal spirits

[Keynes Sings:]

John Maynard Keynes, wrote the book on modern macro
The man you need when the economy’s off track, [whoa]
Depression, recession now your question’s in session
Have a seat and I’ll school you in one simple lesson

BOOM, 1929 the big crash
We didn’t bounce back—economy’s in the trash
Persistent unemployment, the result of sticky wages
Waiting for recovery? Seriously? That’s outrageous!

I had a real plan any fool can understand
The advice, real simple—boost aggregate demand!
C, I, G, all together gets to Y
Make sure the total’s growing, watch the economy fly

Continue reading Keynes and Hayek Rap Video »»

  1. Theroux, David. “‘Fear the Boom and Bust’: Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Video. 26 Jan 2010. The Independent Institute. 27 Jan 2010.↩

Introduction to Socialism vs Capitalism

January 21, 2010 in Capitalism by Greg | 5 comments

While this blog was being formulated, there seemed to be little debate over which type of political economy should be dominant in the United States. In fact, the economic policies of the major political candidates at that time seemed to differ from each other only by degree in terms of government intervention in the economic affairs of citizens.1 This eventually led to the series Notes on Socialism which explores that topic from a religious, social, economic and historical point of view.

Das KapitalOver time, however, it was pointed out that the U.S. economy had really undergone many changes and had passed through various stages of government intervention to what Charlotte Twight called a Participatory Fascism-type system. During this time, some have stumbled upon the site and wondered about the other side of the proverbial coin. For example, what, if anything, does capitalism have to offer?

This series of posts explores a similar set of issues related to capitalism. At first, it might not be apparent why there should be a series called Socialism vs. Capitalism. The question might be asked, Why not just discuss capitalism on its own terms? The short answer is that the term capitalist (Kapitalist) was popularized in the mid-19th century and was used frequently by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in some of their later writings.2

Over time, the term capitalist came to refer to someone with private ownership of capital and the means of production. Interestingly, some have noted that capitalism is really “a term of disparagement coined by socialists in the mid-nineteenth century, [and] is a misnomer for ‘economic individualism’, which Adam Smith earlier called ‘the obvious and simple system of natural liberty.’”3

From a Hegelian Dialectic point of view, capitalism is the thesis in which socialism is the antithesis. Based on this perspective, these two systems are at constant odds with each other and as proponents of each system seek preeminence, new syntheses4 are created as societies “supposedly” continue to evolve.

So it is within this dialectical context that both series – Notes on Socialism and Socialism vs. Capitalism – should be considered. Capitalism simply cannot be discussed without exploring socialism and vice versa. And although today’s political discourse seems to portray choices based primarily along these two seemingly competitive political economies, perhaps there is a third way – or better yet, other ways – that should be considered and become part of public debate.

Sources:

  1. For example, see Ekelund, Robert B. and Mark Thornton. “More Awful Truths About Republicans”. 4 Sep 20008. Ludwig von Mises Institute. 19 Jan 2010.↩
  2. For example, the phrases capitalist and capitalist mode of production appear more than 2,600 times in Das Kapital. See “Capitalism”. Wikipedia. 19 Jan 2010.↩
  3. Hessen, Robert. “Capitalism”. Library of Economics and Liberty. 19 Jan 2010.↩
  4. For example, the development of Market Socialism.↩

Secret Government

January 19, 2010 in Communism by Greg | 1 comment

The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis is a 1987 Public Broadcasting Service video documentary with Bill Moyers following the Iran-Contra affair – ostensibly, an effort to prevent the spread of communism in the Western Hemisphere.1 According to Mr. Moyers,

The Secret Government is an interlocking network of official functionaries, spies, mercenaries, ex-generals, profiteers and superpatriots, who, for a variety of motives, operate outside the legitimate institutions of government. Presidents have turned to them when they can’t win the support of the Congress or the people, creating that unsupervised power so feared by the framers of our Constitution.

The documentary traces the history of the secret government to the National Security Act of 1947 which was signed into law by President Harry S. Truman. It “realigned and reorganized the U.S. Armed Forces, foreign policy, and Intelligence Community apparatus in the aftermath of World War II.”2

Although originally intended to be only an “intelligence-gathering” organization, under the auspices of this act the CIA quickly became an “operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government.”3 According to the documentary “a secret report [was] prepared for the White House in 1954 by a group of distinguished citizens headed by former president Herbert Hoover”:

It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination. There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto accepted norms of human conduct do not apply. If the United States is to survive, longstanding American concepts of fair play must be reconsidered. We must learn to subvert, sabotage, and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated, more effective methods than those used against us.

Continue reading Secret Government »»

  1. See Wolf, Julie. “The Iran-Contra Affair”. PBS. 18 Jan 2010 for background on this event.↩
  2. “National Security Act of 1947”. Wikipedia. 17 Jan 2010.↩
  3. Truman, Harry S. “Limit CIA Role to Intelligence”. 22 Dec 1963. Washington Post. 17 Jan 2010. See also, McGovern, Ray. “Break the CIA into Two”. Consortium News. 17 Jan 2010.↩

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